Selbstportrait / Krise # 1

The starting-point of this performative video work are business news, analyses of financial markets and reports on stock exchange crashes – being broadcasted by the public television station since Andrea Salzmann’s year of birth. The artist adopts global financial crises by stepping into the role of a news presenter beginning with the first major stock exchange crash after World War II in the year of 1987. It’s the artist herself who again and again announces the dreadful message of another stock market collapse. In doing so she outlines a threat scenario which is not easy to locate and appears diffuse in its form. The connection between person and politics, video and live performance allude to the fragility of a linear historiography and to a clash of big and little histories. Andrea Salzmann addresses the question of her own involvement by means of medial staging. Claims to power become entangled with an often unchallenged passive consumption of media within this serious game. Last but not least, the question of how such crises relate to our personal life and to our own security is handled over by the artist to the viewer.